Isadore Jachman and the Battle of Dead Man’s Ridge

foreign gamble on the Western Front began in December 1944. the Arden campaign achieved nearly complete surprise but quickly bogged down and by January the German goal of reaching the Strategic Port of Antwerp Was Out Of Reach and yet fighting continued some of the most brutal conditions on the Western Front in the midst of this battle an elite American unit the U.S 17th Airborne Division experienced their first taste of combat near the village of flemierge Belgium at a nearly forgotten place called Dead Man's Ridge it is history that deserves to be remembered the national museum of the United States Army explains that Army Airborne units were developed to support the concept of vertical envelopment or the ability to strike an enemy from behind when Ground Forces could not go around prepared defenses born out of response to German successes in Holland and Greece the U.S army grew its Airborne units from a small test platoon in 1940 through Battalion and regimental combat in North Africa and Italy to multiple combat-rated divisions by D-Day following the invasion airborne troops would be deployed during operation Market Garden in the Battle of the Bulge and earned a reputation for changing the battlefield as soon as they entered it the 17th Airborne Division was one of five U.S Airborne divisions constituted shortly before and during the second world war the 17th was activated on April 15 1943 and originally consisted of the 513th parachute Infantry Regiment which have been constituted the previous December and the 193rd and 194th glider infantry regiments among the men of the 513th was Isador Jackman Jackman's background would have been rather different than most of his fellow Troopers he had been born in 1922 in Berlin Germany according to a blog post by his cousin isador's father Leo had been born leib jackmanowitz one of twelve children of a Jewish Family from kali's Poland he had moved to Berlin and changed his surname to yakman Isidore was his first child with his wife Leah or Lata in 1924 Leo moved with his family to the United States living in Baltimore where the couple had two more children while Isidore grew up in Maryland 10 of his father's brothers and sisters remained in Poland Isidore was a champion weightlifter in April 1941 edition of the Baltimore Evening Sun described him as the star of the young men's Hebrew Association weightlifting team that was competing for a championship of the South Atlantic Association of the amateur athletic Union Leo told the sun in 1950 that everyone called him one of the best weight lifters in the state he was The Unofficial champion of Maryland the son wrote of him that like his father Isador Jackman was not tall but was a powerful young man he graduated from Baltimore City College High School in 1939 began studying physical education at the University of Baltimore he enlisted on November 17 1942 according to his enlistment record he had completed a year of college and was skilled in mechanics in repair a 2021 post on the website of the United States Army says that after completing basic training he was stationed Stateside but decided to volunteer for the paratroops the website says it's a German Jew Jackman still had plenty of family in Europe so there was no question where his loyalties lay with his adopted home not with the Nazi party that had taken over his native country it's unclear what Jacqueline's family knew about the fate of their relatives in Poland at the time but according to the U.S citizenship and immigration service six of Jackman's aunts and uncles died in the Holocaust parachute training was particularly rigorous as would be expected of elite troops but retired lieutenant general Edward M Flanagan Jr explains in his 2002 book Airborne the combat history of American Airborne forces there was no lack of volunteers for parachute Duty even though both the standards and the washout rates were high they're trained to battle in any part of the world in any climate on any terrain desert or snow the training is tough so is the job foreign the U.S army parachute school had been established at Fort Benning in Georgia the four-week school included former paratrooper Edward Pershing good told Detroit area 4 news in 2018 physical training lots of running push-ups squats with logs followed by training on how to do parachute Falls and control jumps Flanagan explains that jump practice occurred on various devices at Benning that generations of paratroopers have come to remember with respect if not fear these included 250-foot Towers on which paratroop trainees made the first controlled jumps and 34-foot jump towers that gave the trooper the sense of opening shock of the 28-foot canopy good said it was perfectly harmless but it was the hardest thing to do with only be 10 feet and you get caught by the cable and bounce this was harder than the 250 foot Tower because at the tile Tower you had no choice to make lots of people quit at the point of the 35-foot jump the jump training was valuable beyond the parachute Flanagan quotes Lieutenant William P Yarborough with the 501st parachute Infantry Regiment the challenge of jumping from an airplane in flight or descending onto a hostile Landing Zone on an aircraft without an engine would be paralleled later in life or death situations for which Airborne soldiers had already prepared themselves by identifying and strengthening their own psychological assets the men of the 17th Airborne began jump School in October 1943. but while the men of the 17th Airborne were prepared for combat they might not have been prepared for what came next the Allies always struggled with the best way to use their Elite Airborne divisions and the first to be deployed were the 82nd and 101st divisions into Operation Torch the Allied Landings in North Africa but as the Allies fought across North Africa the 17th was still in America training High Airborne casualties in the July 1943 invasion of Sicily then called Airborne tactics into question as American commanders wonder whether large-scale Airborne formations were too difficult to control the 17th participated in operation Knollwood in North Carolina in December 1943 the success of which delayed concerns and convinced Army leadership to continue plans for large Airborne operations the 17th had completed training by March 1944 but when some 13 000 Allied Airborne forces participated in Operation Neptune the Allied Landings at Normandy in June the men of the 17th were still in the United States the 17th didn't ship out until August arriving in Liverpool eight days later the division was in England in time for operation Market Garden and Airborne operation in the Netherlands launched in September but command decided that the 17th didn't have enough time to train for the operation and that their equipment from the U.S had not been fully Consolidated the 17th was kept in reserve left behind in England while the Allies deployed some 41 thousand airborne troops from more than 3 600 aircraft and then even more waiting they always want to save their Elite Airborne units for Special Operations and as winter rolled in in 1944 the 17th was still in England part of a strategic reserve it seemed that they might not see combat until the spring when an Airborne operation might be planned but the Germans had other ideas the website of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Museum explains on December 16 1944 the Germans began their last major offensive in the West in the Arden Forest of Belgium the 406 342 men of army Group B slammed into the unprepared forces of the Allied 12th and 21st Army groups creating a bulge in the Western Front in an effort to break through and capture the vital Port of antorp whole American infantry regiments were captured as German comp groups slashed through weak points and in circled positions panicked and in desperate need of reinforcements allies leaders decided to deploy the theater reserves these were the Airborne divisions the 82nd and 101st divisions were already in Europe and were quickly trucked into the fight the 101st Airborne along with the 969th artillery Battalion in parts of the 10th Irma division were surrounded and besieged in the Belgian town and critical crosswords of pastelon despite being terribly outnumbered The Battered Bastards of best stone held until troops of the U.S third Army broke through the German encirclement on December 26th but the 17th had been limited both by weather and lack of transport and did not arrive in the ardan until December 24th when over a period of three days they were transported to France the website Scions of the 17th Airborne explains the 17th was undergoing further intensive Airborne training when the news of the German breakthrough in the Battle of the Bulge was received units of the 17th are rushed to the rims area of France by air in spectacular night transport Landings these elements closed in on more Malone and after taking over the defense of the Muse River sector from Juve to Verdun on 25th December the 17th moved to New chateau then they move through the snow to Moret relieving the 20th Infantry Division on 3 January 1945. but the men of the 17th had still not seen combat and it seemed that they had arrived too late for the Battle of the Bulge scallions of the 17th Airborne explains General Patton who had just taken command of the sector believed that the Germans when stopped at best own were in full retreat Patton ordered the 17th to attack under what skies at the 17th Airborne described as appalling conditions of snow and fog with poor intelligence no air cover and inadequate artillery support the Saint George Utah daily Spectrum reported in 2013 that Patton told General William Bud Kylie commander of the 17th there would be Little Resistance but Patton was wrong that the Germans were in full Retreat the website of the Portsmouth Naval Museum writes Hitler incensed by the failure of his troops to take the city ordered remaining forces to attack and close the gap as soon as possible with the lack of good error reconnaissance and continued bouts of foul weather the advance ordered by General Patton would run headlong and to this counter-attack 17 division veteran John Corman was quoted in the 2010 edition of the newspaper the Oklahoman what Patton didn't know was that we were actually attacking a German army that had been heavily reinforced with two Panzer armored divisions he had no way of knowing and that's what we walked into that day the men of the 17th would experience their first taste of combat there in Belgium in a battle that became known as the Battle of dead man's Ridge the Oklahoman quoted Paul Wilson of the 17th's 193rd glider Infantry Regiment the orders came quickly there was this heavy layer of fog and mist of the area so we didn't jump in we were trucked in in fact we walked most of the way I saw some dead G eyes Frozen on the side of the road as we went in and they remember thinking this is for Real private Albert Bryant of the 513th parachute Infantry Regiment described the artillery barrage that greeted the men of the 17th on the morning of the fourth on the website Battle of the Bulge memories just as it started to get light the Germans started an artillery barrage in our position we are not safe in our Foxhole because the artillery shells were going off in the Treetops and running shrapnel down all around us there was snow on the ground and every time a shell hit and exploded it left a big black ring in the snow about 50 feet across I wondered at the time if the black ring represented The Killing Zone when it happened again I was glad to see one Trooper get up and move out of the black Zone on his own it was at this moment that I first experienced the sound of a bullet passing directly over my head I dropped to the ground and landed on top of my gas mask and when I saw how much the mask elevated my hind end all I could think of was that I was gonna get my ass shot off I didn't think twice about discarding the gas mask there in the cold and the fog their enemy exposed themselves with a massive barrage of heavy machine gun artillery and mortars the website of the Portsmouth Naval Museum rights company a was sent reeling with men diving for What Little cover they could find in the Farmland as German Gunners began targeting individual positions by the time company a was withdrawn from the attack at 11 20 am the 130 men attached to the unit were in tatters company a mortar man Paul Wilson put the Survivor count for the company that day at 16. Scions of the 17th Airborne writes that the Germans hurled dozens of tanks and heavy a barrage of artillery at the attackers and many casualties were inflicted on the lightly armed Troopers the 2250 yards of narrow High Rin Road Northeast of Bastone rightfully earned its nickname of dead man's Ridge attacking and driving snow storm the division battled for control of the ridge was a bitterly fought battle that I saw the 17th suffered close to a thousand casualties during the three-day battle lightly armed paratroopers and gliderman at times in waist-deep snow were fighting German tanks the airborne troops were lightly armed and had limited weapons with which to combat the German armor Bryant recalled that when our Bazookas fired a missile and hit one of the tanks it might knock off a little metal but no real harm was done we had a trooper dug in with a bazooka about 40 feet in front of us he fired the bazook at a tiger tank and the tank fired back and our Trooper was directly hit by an 88 millimeter shell one of his body parts landed near me among those facing the tanks was Company B of the 513th parachute Infantry Regiment in which Isador Jackman was a staff sergeant the website of the US Army describes how his company was attacked on January 4th 1945 Jackman was with Company B and flemierge Belgium when they were suddenly pinned down by heavy fire including artillery mortar and abraja fire from two enemy tanks they quickly inflicted heck casualties on his unit Jackman saw his comrades were in desperate need of something that would help them instead of staying where he had taken cover he jumped up and ran across the open ground despite the gunfire he grabbed a bazooka from a fallen soldier and moved towards the tanks which began concentrating their fire on him Scions of the 17th Airborne explains when two German tanks broke out of the dense fog and threatened to overrun the 513th position staff sergeant Jackman recovered a bazooka from a fallen comrade and single-handedly engaged the two panzers he knocked one out and caused the other to fall back the website of the US Army writes his bold move disrupted the enemy's attack which saved Company B from complete decimation but the Act was his last The Baltimore Sun wrote in 2007 as he began firing at the second tank he was cut down by Machine Gun fire dying from his wounds he was 22. the 17th took terrible casualties but the website of the Portsmouth Naval Museum explains sacrifice on what was to become known as Dead Man's Ridge was not in vain while the encounter with heavy German forces was unexpected and catastrophically violent the unintended counter-attack by the 17th Airborne checked the German Advance stalling and ultimately preventing their drive back towards Bastone nearly a thousand Americans were killed or wounded over the course of what would become a three-day engagement before the Germans were finally repulsed the Baltimore Evening Sun reported Isidore Jackman's death on April 10th for his sacrifice he was awarded the distinguished service medal but in 1950 Maryland Senator Herbert O'Connor heard the story of his action and asked the adjutant general to review the award upon review it was upgraded to the Medal of Honor by date of action it was the first medal of honor to be awarded to a member of the 17th airborne and only the second to be awarded to a Jewish soldier in the Second World War today his Medal of Honor is cared for by the national museum of American Jewish military history in Washington D.C I hope you enjoyed this episode of the history guide check out our community on the historyguideguild.locals.com our webpage at thehistoryguy.com and our merchandise at teespring.com or book a special message from the history guy on Cameo and if you'd like more episodes of Forgotten history all you have to do is subscribe foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

Views: 108,334

Keywords: history, history guy, the history guy

Id: GddQUKX3SWU

Length: 16min 41sec (1001 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 04 2023